Are taxes too low?

Mayor Whaley thinks so

By Mark Luedtke

When voters go to the polls this November in Dayton, they will get to vote on Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley’s proposal to increase Dayton’s income tax burden to 2.5 percent. Before voters go to the polls, I hope they ask themselves if Dayton and the U.S. are declining because the people aren’t taxed enough. I hope they’ll ask themselves if having less money for groceries, gas, housing, utilities, car repair, etc.—being poorer—benefits them and their families. Before its long decline, was Dayton one of the greatest cities in the world because of higher taxes? Did higher taxes make America the greatest country in the world?

These questions answer themselves.

If you’re still undecided, here’s a more specific question: Did taxes make the Arcade a wonderful place to do business? Did low tax rates put it out of business? Dayton’s rulers don’t think so. The Dayton Daily News recently reported, “The Montgomery County Land Bank agreed to take ownership of the bulk of the Dayton Arcade to eliminate more than $500,000 in delinquent taxes to help redevelop the complex.”

There it is in black and white from the DDN. The Arcade has been an abandoned, unsafe eyesore for two decades because of taxes. Our rulers know eliminating the burden of taxes promotes economic development. Imagine if Whaley had announced an increase in the tax burden on the Arcade to benefit the community. DDN readers would have spit their coffee out their noses at the ridiculousness of the announcement. Her claim that raising the income tax rate will benefit Daytonians is equally ridiculous.

Whaley is advancing a self-serving agenda with this tax, and we don’t have to wonder what it is. She tells us on her Issue 9 propaganda page.

Her biggest argument for the tax hike is taxation without representation—the same thing America’s founding fathers rebelled against. This is a scam at least as old as King George. “The majority [of taxes] will be paid by those who live outside Dayton, but work here and use city services,” according to Issue 9. Whaley considers the people who come from the suburbs to Dayton to work a burden on city services and, therefore, the people who live in the city, as if they’re setting fires downtown. She plans to punish them, as if she isn’t punishing them enough already. If you wondered why Dayton’s suburbs tend to thrive compared to Dayton’s city, this is the reason. Only masochists would punish themselves by paying Dayton’s income tax when they could do business and make more money in a suburb with lower taxes.

Whaley further declares the additional tax revenue raised by the higher tax rate will be used to improve city services.
Baloney. If there’s any increased revenue, it will be temporary because businesses will relocate out of town. The end result of this tax hike will ultimately be fewer businesses, residents, and commuters in Dayton because they will move to lower-tax locales.

Of course, by then, Whaley will have moved on, too. In the meantime, she will have used most of the revenue to line the pockets of her cronies. The people left in Dayton will suffer.

Whaley lists some reasons the taxes are needed, like the general fund is the same as it was in 1998. So what? It should be smaller. Dayton’s population is smaller. The less the government taxes, spends, and regulates, the better for the people.

She wants to avoid monetary cuts to Dayton Fire and EMS, but cutting chiefs and hiring more firemen would save money. She wants to tear up more Dayton streets then shoddily repair them so they need repair again, year after year. That’s a socialist jobs program to buy votes. Not happy with ripping children from parents when they’re 5, she wants to rip them from parents when they’re 4, disintegrating families and brainwashing children into supporting socialism, like in Venezuela. She wants to keep parks mowed. In my experience, the parks have never been mowed in a timely fashion or well maintained. This is because of socialism, not lack of funds.

More tax revenue, no matter how long it lasts, won’t improve city services, but it will make Whaley and her cronies richer and everybody else poorer.

But thousands of Daytonians benefit from government’s stolen money, so they’re pushing propaganda door-to-door to get votes. They’ll be hard to stop. Productive people must vote against this tax hike in force or pay the price.

The views and opinions expressed in Conspiracy Theorist are the views and/or opinions of the author and do not reflect the views and/or opinions of the Dayton City Paper or Dayton City Media and are published strictly for entertainment purposes.